The need to protect our eyes from the sun rays has become more of an essential need than just comfort. On solution for people wearing eyeglasses is to attach sun protecting clip-ons to the eyeglasses. However, the endless number of eyeglasses shapes and sizes makes it difficult to match an off the shelf clip-on to a pair of eyeglasses.
The wide use of clip-on glasses in exemplary applications, such as sunglasses and enhancement eyewear, has spawned many methods for producing matching clip-ons to existing eyeglasses.
Prior art, such as US Patent application publications 2006/0120567 and 2006/0118501, include techniques and systems that rely mostly upon the experience and skill of the manufacturer and which entail shipping a finished matching clip-on product to the customer, a process that entails substantial effort in shipping and concomitant time delays.
One method for producing matching clip-ons is to send the primary eyeglasses to a clip-on laboratory. Such a method requires shipment of the eyeglasses back and forth as well as the clip-ons, causing the client to temporarily depart from his eyeglasses, which is typically inconvenient.
A second method requires the optician to acquire a device for producing clip-ons in the shop. In this approach the end result quality of the clip-ons depends on the skills and workmanship of the optician.
In a third approach, rather than sending the primary eyeglasses to a clip-on laboratory, data describing the primary eyeglasses is sent to the clip-on laboratory. The client gets to use the primary eyeglasses while waiting for the clip-ons to arrive from the clip-on laboratory, but still, the method requires shipping the produced clip-on, which involves cost and waiting time.
US patent application 2003/0101603, discloses a system for imaging a pair of eyeglasses and obtaining data indicative of the outline of the eyeglasses and designated locations associated with the outline. The system is useful for custom forming, on a non-industrial scale, clip-ons adapted to be used with eyeglasses. Referring to FIG. 1, a basic flow chart 11 of the steps of prior art clip-on production method, is shown. In step 10 the primary eyeglasses are imaged; the images are analyzed in step 20 whereas the analysis results are provided to a production machine, which produces the clip-on in step 30.
US patent applications 2006/0120567 ('567) and 2006/011850 include techniques and systems that rely mostly upon the experience and skill of the manufacturer in a production center. The method entails shipping the finished matching clip-on product to the customer, a process that entails substantial effort in shipping and concomitant time delays. The system provided by '567 is schematically shown in FIG. 2. System 90 includes an imager 62 disposed at site 60. System 90 further includes a processor 82 and a production machine 84, disposed at site 80, referred to as a “production center”. Typically a customer 50 request the clip on at site 60 where customer 50 provides his eyeglasses (55) and then needs to wait for the clip-on to be produced and delivered to customer 50.
It should be noted that any misalignment between imager 62 and mounted eyeglasses 55 yield a distorted image of eyeglasses 55.
Thus there is a need for and it would be advantageous to have a method allowing a matching, producing and delivering of clip-ons for a given pair primary eyeglasses, whereas customer 50 does not have to wait for the delivery of the clip-ons. There is a further need to have an imaging method which is not sensitive to the alignment between imager 62 and mounted eyeglasses 55.
Embodiments of the present invention serve as improvements to matching clip-on manufacturing and manufacturing systems and methods, enabling more effective clip-on production and allowing lens cutting equipment to be situated in any locale, and not only in close proximity to the scanning, editing, and other lens/clip-on preparation equipment. Additionally or alternatively, embodiments of the present invention may be applied to manufacturing eyeglasses and lenses thereof, as described hereinbelow.